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Legends of Charlemagne by Thomas Bulfinch
page 19 of 402 (04%)

"Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims, the friend and secretary of Charles
the Great, excellently skilled in sacred and profane literature,
of a genius equally adapted to prose and verse, the advocate of
the poor, beloved of God in his life and conversation, who often
fought the Saracens, hand to hand, by the Emperor's side, he
relates the acts of Charles the Great in one book, and flourished
under Charles and his son Louis, to the year of our Lord eight
hundred and thirty."

The titles of some of Archbishop Turpin's chapters will show the
nature of his history. They are these: "Of the Walls of Pampeluna,
that fell of themselves." "Of the War of the holy Facundus, where
the Spears grew." (Certain of the Christians fixed their spears in
the evening, erect in the ground, before the castle; and found
them, in the morning, covered with bark and branches.) "How the
Sun stood still for Three Days, and of the Slaughter of Four
Thousand Saracens."

Turpin's history has perhaps been the source of the marvellous
adventures which succeeding poets and romancers have accumulated
around the names of Charlemagne and his Paladins, or Peers. But
Ariosto and the other Italian poets have drawn from different
sources, and doubtless often from their own invention, numberless
other stories which they attribute to the same heroes, not
hesitating to quote as their authority "the good Turpin," though
his history contains no trace of them; and the more outrageous the
improbability, or rather the impossibility, of their narrations,
the more attentive are they to cite "the Archbishop," generally
adding their testimonial to his unquestionable veracity.
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